A Coach's Notes On the Everyday

Bud Wilkinson won college football titles, advised presidents, ran for office—and wrote tender letters full of wise advice for his son. Gregg Easterbrook reviews "Dear Jay, Love Dad."

By

Gregg Easterbrook

February 13, 2012

Try to imagine this: A big-deal college football coach—say, Nick Saban of national champs Alabama—sends weekly handwritten letters to a son away at college, urging the young man to place education ahead of athletics. The letters are tenderly emotional, rich in discussion of current events, enlivened with quotes from Emerson, Marlowe, Wordsworth. Is there any well-known coach today who would do this—for that matter, any major political or corporate leader who would?

Bud Wilkinson (1916-94), the principal subject of "Dear Jay, Love Dad," was to college football of the 1950s and 1960s what Mr. Saban is to the sport today. At the University of Oklahoma, Wilkinson's teams won three national championships. He became a national celebrity and was called to Washington to consult with Presidents Kennedy and Nixon. Wilkinson ran for the U.S. Senate in 1964; a Republican, he rode the reverse-coattails effect of Barry Goldwater to a loss. Wilkinson then became among the first coaches to transition to the broadcast booth. Late in life, he was a popular choice to head public-awareness campaigns on fitness and other topics. "Dear Jay, Love Dad" is a memoir by Wilkinson's younger son, Jay, which mainly concerns the many letters father sent to son when Jay was at Duke University and which adds detail on the father and autobiography on Jay. The letters are captivating, making "Dear Jay, Love Dad" a book that will fascinate anyone interested in college football, the politics of the 1960s or the state of Oklahoma. What the author writes about himself, however, is vexing. Let's take the letters first.

"We received your grades from Duke today, I was truly proud," Bud writes in one letter. "Don't ever be swayed by what other people think," he advises in another. Bud tells Jay that he reads daily because it is "intellectually stimulating," mentioning among other books and authors the Bible, William James and Vance Packard, who at the time was viewed as a radical due to works like his anti-advertising exposé "The Hidden Persuaders." Father sends to son diary-like reports on football practice, politics and his travels, at one point noting that he was excited to have an expense-account trip to New York City, where he stayed at the Plaza and ate expensive meals.

Father endlessly assures son of unconditional love: "It was pure delight to have you home," and "I love you Jay more than anything in life." Despite regular reading on religion and philosophy, he says, "life's eternal problems remain mystifying to me."

Bud Wilkinson's many letters to Jay—he also wrote to his older son, Pat—reflect a seemingly simpler time as well as a period when long-distance phone calls were pricey. The decline of the personal letter has not only taken the thrill out of opening the mailbox; it imperils the writing of history. What will future biographers have to work with—text messages, Facebook walls and credit-card receipts? The letters Bud Wilkinson's son has preserved reflect well on the father, making him seem wise, humble and deeply concerned with moral and religious values.

That's why the last third of "Dear Jay, Love Dad" becomes jarring. First depicting his parents' marriage as near-perfect, late in the book Jay casually notes that, after 37 years of marriage, his father divorced the woman who bore his children. Jay says little of how this affected his mother, beyond that "the transition was difficult for her." Jay does not add a fact readily gleaned from news accounts—that Bud Wilkinson, age 60, ditched his first wife to marry a 27-year-old woman.

ENLARGE

Dear Jay, Love Dad

By Jay Wilkinson (Oklahoma, 188 pages, $24.95)

The book notes in passing that both Jay and his brother, Pat, also divorced their first wives, in Jay's case to marry someone younger. When Jay introduces his first wife to readers, he relates that she was a recent Miss Oklahoma. Later, when he remarries, he says nothing about her: She simply vanishes from his life. "Dear Jay, Love Dad" presents the Wilkinson family as a stronghold of Christian values, but the marital history of the three men sends a more complex message.

Bud Wilkinson's thoughts about his marriage don't figure in his letters to his son. Another notable absence is discussion of the Vietnam War, which intensified just as Jay was about to leave college. As Jay prepares to graduate from Duke in 1964, he views himself as a "probable first-round draft pick" for the NFL but decides to enter an Episcopal seminary because he feels "committed to helping the disadvantaged." Beyond the vanity of declaring oneself a "probable" first-round pick—the Chicago Bears in fact chose Jay in the ninth round of the old 20-round draft—the author does not mention that, at the time, a man graduating from college became subject to the military draft. There were a few exceptions, among them entering a seminary.

Jay completes four years of seminary life, then discovers, in 1968, that he does not want to serve the poor; rather, he wishes to become a businessman. He attributes this decision to "an inner dialogue" and goes on to a successful career in the financial sector. Elsewhere in the book, we learn that around the same time he received a 1-Y draft deferment, which then meant no chance of being called. The reason was medical—ulcers. "Dad helped provide my medical history," Jay writes.

It would be interesting to know what discussions Bud and his son had about all this. But they aren't in the letters, or at least the ones here. If Jay felt the Vietnam War was unjust; or unconstitutional, because Congress never declared war; or that the military draft was involuntary servitude—fair cases could be made for these contentions. Jay doesn't make them. Autobiography should be honest; Jay Wilkinson's failure to be straightforward is striking.

The reader's inability to trust the son's voice does not detract from the voice of his father's letters. Other than in leaving his wife, Bud Wilkinson appears to have led an exemplary life. How many at the top of contemporary athletics can say the same?

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